AdHustler.com get’s various reports about what’s going on deep in the trenches of online marketing. One development that’s caught my eye lately is Facebook’s FriendPhotoCaptcha. Most of us have Facebook Profiles. Some of us (like me) get tons of friend request from random people. Although i’ve significantly cut down on accepting friend requests from people I don’t know, I have a lot of people on my profile who quite honestly I have no idea who they are. Since I haven’t had the time to go through all of these friends and cut out the dead weight I realized that I am putting my account at risk with Facebook’s new FriendPhotoCaptcha.
Here’s how it works. You get a page from Facebook saying that they don’t recognize your location and that you need to “confirm your identity.” In order to do so they put you through a FriendPhotoCaptcha test. The test takes random Facebook photo’s (some not even of faces) and makes you pick from a list which friend it is. I don’t know about you but I don’t know the name of a lot of my Facebook Friends by looking at their pictures. If you get the questions wrong your account remains locked down and you can try again in an hour.
Screenshots:
Since becoming friends requires the permission of both parties I don’t see why being friends with people you don’t actually know well is an issue to Facebook. I’m guessing that this FriendPhotoCaptcha is a move to ensure that everyone on your Facebook Profile is actually your friend in real life and not just online. If not, it’s a very poorly thought out security mechanism. Either way it makes you think twice about confirming people as your friends that you don’t actually know.
If I ever get locked out of my account I hope they don’t start quizzing me on my friends favorite foods or dating preferences.
What are your thoughts on FriendPhotoCaptcha?
I assume the reason they added this was to prevent spammers from accessing users accounts. Previously, it asked for the users birthday. This was easy to find, and they can bypass the “Roadblock”, but by asking the user which friend is in the photo, the spammer would have no clue as to who is who.
Was that thought up at a random night of doing drugs to come up with insane ideas to add on to facebook? That is one of the most random ideas I think they’ve thought of.
Some of these people have nothing better to do. They should stop eating free sushi and brush up on their coding skills instead of dreaming up ridiculous schemes.
Its like communism, sounds good, but horrible in practice
Will cause many people problems
good find and good blog post
lol I know people who put their girlfriend/boyfriend as their profile picture. My own profile picture is of a car I don’t own.
This whole thing is stupid.
You serious?
Lol, this will never work.
Yet another brilliant idea from FB!
I haven’t seen this yet with my account. I know people use bots to add friends and this can be a good move from that angle. Maybe they are targeting people who they think are spamming or using bots. It also can be a test for profiles which are reported maybe… Doing this for all profiles will drive people away from Facebook.
I think there is a little confusion. Facebook doesn’t give you the profile pics. It gives the pictures from their album in which they were tagged. It will give you a list of pics that you tagged or the friends who tagged you (so you guys know each other better). I tried it once and it gave me those. Correct me if I am wrong
Thanks
David
@David – From my understanding it’s random friends.
@David is correct. This happened to my partner recently when we were on holiday in Greece (though oddly it didn’t happen to me).
What happened in her case was that she was shown photos in which her friends were ‘tagged’. However, some of these were simply pictures of landscapes, pets and so on. People ‘tag’ their friends on these so that the photos show up on their Walls (I think). But it makes knowing who they are supposed to represent totally impossible.
Nice one, Facebook!
Yeah I got in a bind the other day with this same issue..its really ridiculous if you ask me! Definitely a good post, worthy read.
i wish i could advertise on the “try again in 1 hour” page. Think of all the affiliate offers the users could sign up for while waiting an hour to try to get into their account.
I guess they are trying to figure out how to combat scenarios where fake accounts are logging in from IP addresses that are geographically far apart. However, if I sign in to my corporate VPN, my IP is in Montana, then i sign in not connected to my VPN and the IP is in New Jersey. It is a legitimate use case, and not always a bogus account.
I actually ran into this page a few times, and it sucks to say the least because some of the photos that your friends might have aren’t actually them. And it could be someone that you don’t even know.
Its a good try but maybe FB should’ve re-thought this one. Just my .02 cents
This was a completely horrible idea. I am in Afghanistan working as a contractor and I travel all over. The old way of just asking questions that only I would know was a perfect security feature, IMO. However now I am completely locked out of my account. Since I am contracting I have a lot of FB “friends” that I don’t know very well, more so in passing from place to place. FB is an easy way of keeping in touch with everyone. And since everyone seems to have a FB account I normally just say “Face Book me.” Now that this ‘FriendPhotoCaptcha’ thing is employed to verify my account I get nothing but random pics of people’s farms and dogs and anything but pictures of the people I know. So if anyone knows how to get back to the old FB way of verifying your account please help.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help,
Jay
@Pitviper7777 – Great example of why this is seriously flawed. Stay safe in Afghanistan.
How about the fact that when this happened to me, FB showed me a picture of a person wearing a CLOWN MASK? How am I supposed to know who that person is, if I can’t even see their face?! This new FB captcha crap isnt going to last!
Well I was finally able to log on to my FB account I was lucky enough that the 7 or 8 photos were of things I recognized and could answer which friends it was. I think it only took 20 or so tries. Anyway this photo verification thing is still such a huge hassle if it happens again. I am going back to MySpace and dropping FB.
Thanks for reading this,
Jay
If they’d ask you to ID people tagged in your OWN photos you might have a chance – There’s no way I can make out the faces of people on Facebook with some of the crazy profile picture out there, let alone the fact that I haven’t seen half of them in ages, and the other half I’ve never seen them. Yup, I don’t get out much.
lol @ getting a picture of someone with a clown mask.
Why not just do it like banks do and let you pick the picture in your account that you have to recognize for access to the account?
Security is one of those things that when it’s dumb, it completely idiotic. (Think airport security)
I have no chance logging on my account again. Ihave more than 2500 friends, and I do not know every body’s faces or names. I play games and accept players daily.
Facebook does this to help me?
I have tried since yesterday to log on. This is crazy and I can’t writhe them…………..
@scarface The title of this post explains it all – Facebook’s FriendPhotoCaptcha = Your Screwed 😉
i agree the bank picture thing works OK. However, it is from a 3rd party, sitekey, and VERY expensive. I investigated this when working for a domain registrar with 1 million customers, and it was too expensive. They would most likely have to build their own as it is priced based on the number of users
fuckkkkkkkkkkkk i got screw whit that shit i have lot of friends but only for the games and some pictures are from games like pet story photo how in the hell i´ll know hwo is it whit jus that fuckin animals and ther people?????????????????????? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr fucking FB
Facebooks un gran problema y perdida de tu trabajo al no poder entrar en tu cuenta sin reconocer a todos los amigos por su nombre tengo 800 imposoble conocerlos a todos
muy mal facebooks te hace perder horas de trabajo si no conoces el nombre de todos tus amigo no te permite entrar en tu pagina pero sigue activa y tampoco cancelar la cuenta
Since it only takes an unfamiliar IP to trigger the roadblock its a big problem. Any gamer will have many friends who’s pictures will not be known, so they are screwed.
Email validation is the way to go for this.
fa skifo,non posso riconoscere gli amici dalle fotdo,ne ho piu di 500 e facebook non mi fa accedere nel mio profilo.
:S this is nothing good!! Facebook must take this out ”Friendphotocaptcha”
[…] of feet, pictures of dogs, blurry pictures of people from behind, and “funny” drawings. I am not the only one. Many people have been locked out of their accounts for hours due to this impossible […]
I just move to unalaska and t-mobile dont work here so i use internet to contact my friends, and the stupid facebook lock me down, nice and neat. Thanks but no thanks, I will find other websites that is less hassle
This F*cking sucks!! I’m on a hotel computer and have 1500 friends. How the hell am I suppose to know who was tagged in the picture of a fucking car!! A cat!!! a kegger party!! This is the lamest idea ever. Why didn’t someone at facebook say “hey, this is probably a bad idea”. I have been locked out for two days. Even if I do get lucky and recognize the 8 friends tagged in an obscure pic, the computer will be reset when I try to log on the next day! Okay, I am done ranting! I just need my MW fix!! : (
Yes I have been locked out now for 4 days,… tried many times to log in, can’t…. have over 2500 friends,… no chance.
And the craziest thing is, that it was me, myself logging in on a code wrong, because i had forgotten, that a phone uses not’ the log in-code I use for Facebook.
I have wrote to Zynga,…. but of course I get the same message as always and no further response…. the message they give EVERYBODY, that they would investigate.
And to Facebook, but no’ response.
This is to laugh at!. Ma by fine that they do it difficult for hackers, but why me?
They could ask me for my family- there names and so on, in a mail send to me- they could ask for the secret answers, but no.
I’m out- have spend about 2 years playing Mafia Wars, am a very high level…. but now I got robbed, killed and playing wars against.
This is not nice!
I am artist and have many paintings on Facebook. And I found a connection, where my paintings should be printed on T-shirts for sale…. but now I can’t write to the man and can’t do the business.
Also I had my paintings stored there as an garanti, so I would never loose them… the pictures of them.
Vere nice!
I can’t get in contact with my family any more….
I love Facebook and Zynga!
Same thing happened to me I have alot of random ppl I add also and i’ve been blocked out since saturday so..I am on a different computer im at my parents out of the state and I wonder if it will recognize me when Im back on my Own computer???? anyone know that answer????
agree this is BS!!! so stupid!!!!!
Just happened to me on my new work laptop – used the “I don’t know” option up on the first two and took a lucky guess on the next before I realized I could still use my mobile phone (and process of elimination) to make it through by finding the actual photos in question on FB. This is a perfect example of why clever ideas often go down in flames in the real world. My earnest desire is that the brilliant idiots that conceived this be forced to re-take this test daily until they too have experienced this special kind of hell.
This is a horrible idea!
Could we not make a group against this??????
——————————————————
I think many will support it, if they only knew how it works.
The problem with Zynga and face book is, that they often chance the system without letting people know.
And I think it’s a shame on Zynga saying yes to this, when they sell points and weapons to people and not helping them, when they are being locked out without a reason.
When you write to them, both, you will get no’ answer.
They are partners…. and it is Face book it self that try to get people invite a lot of “friends”, so that they can earn more money.
Last time we made a lock-out of Mafia wars, it worked, and see Face book now, they have chanced back to the old way showing things on homepage….. Just when we where getting used to it….
This caused me to not be able to log in to facebook at work today.
This is a bad idea.
Fuckkkkkk about this FriendPhotoCaptcha, i have almost 2500 friends of which many to be honest i have no idea who they are, and i haven’t checked their profile photo’s and so on, funny enough i wan’t asked about this feature or even on the security settings to change from it. it comes by default. i don’t think they even know what they are fuckin’ doing….bunch of idiots
i want to see my facebook homepage
i want to open my facebook homepage
i just got blocked.i have an enormous number of animal activists who post usually and often as main pic the photos of the dog they want to be adopted.It is impossible to couple upnames and pics.Idiotic!i ve given uo on facebook..no time to wsste on decifering..in the long run they re going to hurt themselves…
DISCULPE PERO DIGAME COMO PUEDO ENTRAR IN RESPONDER ESAS FOTO LO QUE PASA ES QUE NO CONOSCO A ALGUNOS Y NO PUEDO ENTRAR ESPERO ME AYUDE GRACIAS.
This would make sense if:
1) It’s used for a Facebook’s Personal profile page and had clear images of actual faces of the friends.
2) Also, should NOT be used for Business Pages as it’s designed for people you really know and not just online.
Found a way to get past this, or through t really. Not everyone can do this and don’t work if your friends pages are set to private. BUT you can log on to an account that is friends with the compromised account and go through the listed friends pages and find the tagged photos. Now keep in mind you can skip up to two. So if you are having immense trouble in finding a photo from the listed friends you can skip it. only have to answer 5 out of 7. Good Luck and FB Dev’s, get off the crack and think of better ways!
I have been locked out for over a month. I am out of town, 3000 miles away from home. I can not keep in contact with my children back home, like I use to on my facebook! I skype them now..but it was nice posting my daily activities for them and to see there days as well.
I have researched and tried and Tried to get through this.
My pictures Flash..before me..giving me NO time to identify anything!
I wish I could get back on Facebook!
The applications on Facebook games force you to add unknown friends to further your game progress. How are we supposed to recognize all the strange photos. Must be another way.
OH MY GOODNESS!!! (sigh) Yea, I just went through HELL trying to just let go of all the time and patience I put into World at War. I’ve learned my lesson (I should be old enough to know better), don’t put your heart into something that could be easily lost! I was lucky to have only taken a few hours to get back into my account but, I want to help you out with something I was going to try. I know this will be less encouraging for those of you with hundreds and hundreds of friends but if it makes any of you feel better, I had 160 friends. NONE but a handful of which I knew.
1. Make a bogus account
2. Look for your account
3. View your account and pull up your friends list
4. Here comes the grueling part, start writing down names, race, sex, other attributes, etc. Example:
John Doe White/male short dark hair, has a
newly born baby (look
for baby in photos or any
other indications for a
new born, etc.
5. You have 5 options of names to chose from, quickly
eliminate the girls from the boys names (this is where the
name and male/female description will come in handy) as well as names you already know, then go through your list that should be in ABC’s order. Every time/day that goes by, make an effort to write down more and more characteristics that will help you identify the picture.
I know you are probably PISSED, as I was! I’m so sorry. I wish you the best and I hope this has at least helped.
** Also, it may not be a bad idea to change the password
to your email account asap, in case your email account is now at risk as well.
I forgot another HUGE great help when you’re writing down your friend’s attributes/characteristics. . . .their ethnicity. You can also use their ethnicity to best match with the last name out of the list of names they give you. I hope this all has helped!
So before anyone said i also tried couple of hours to login to my account. Yes i have traveled to another country and i play games on facebook (like Mafia wars and poker). So i have a lot of friends. But it is not ethical to watch everyone’s profile and see their personal pictures so i just chat with them. But now it seems i am screwed.
I tried to trick the friendphotocaptcha by searching for all friends on my bothers account and clicking the right pictures but in the end i got this.
“You waited too long to solve the security check. Please enter a response now.”
Another hour wasted. I think i need to be very fast next time to trick the system.